The Nowhere King | Saturday Night in Barrow, Alaska

[xp-submariner.livejournal.com]

Barrow has a high profile visitor, but it takes more than the rumor mill to tear Clint Barton away from his work and pizza.

It was Saturday — Clint's day off. He'd traded it with one of his coworkers so she could go out Sunday night with her boyfriend. There were only three of them, total, working at the warehouse SWORD had taken over from SHIELD and it paid to make the people you worked with happy. So he'd set up shop with his laptop in Barrow's pizzeria, which was literally the only place in town more exciting than the airport.

When the door opened with a faint jingle, the agent barely glanced up to see which of the locals had come in for a pie and a pint.

Only it wasn't a local that had him doing a double take.

It had been a good day, or at least as close to a good day as you could have. The board of one of the local oil companies had agreed to the buyout Sue had convinced her grandfather to send her to secure. So now, while they were no doubt popping the corks on champagne bottles, the blonde had retreated to the pizzeria. Her hotel manager had said it was the best place in town to grab dinner, and so before the lawyers went to work on the nitty, gritty details of the contract, the blonde had gone across the street to get some peace and quite and a slice of pizza. Or at least she'd be able to relax once her food was ready. As it was, she had just ordered so Sue amused herself drawing shapes in the condensation on the side of her glass. Perhaps a bit childish, but she had totally earned it today.

"Well, this is unexpected," Clint said, voice just loud enough to carry. "Susan Storm. In the frigid great, North. What could you possibly be doing in Barrow?"

"Oh, you know how it is. You get tired of all the beaches and hot weather. Sun, sea, and surf. Who needs it?" The blonde turned around with a smile on her face. "Doctor Barton, I never expected to run into you up here. Barrow isn't exactly the center of the Computational and Systems Biology universe." Running into an old TA was the last thing she'd have expected. She could still remember the college classes from MiT. An entire roomful of girls swooning over the young teaching assistant.

"Right, sun," Clint said, amused despite himself. "Definitely overrated. But you'd be surprised, the kinds of stuff you can get up to in Barrow. Or not. I'd imagine you might have some idea, considering the buzz in town the last few days. Buying up tiny Alaskan companies?"

"Tiny with lots of potential," Sue countered with a smile. "Everyone is fighting over the oil profits, and so are we, but," the blonde shrugged. "Everyone always forgets all the support and maintenance services you need to keep things running. Logistics, they make the world go round." Sue took a sip from her drink. "I have heard that the arts and crafts here are pretty good, but other than that, most of my trip has been hotel to boardroom, boardroom to hotel. Though you know, you haven't told me what you're doing here." She noted nodding at the empty seat at the table and raising a hand to attract a waitress. "I imagine it's quite a story."

"Eh, y'know," Clint said, shrugging. He gestured toward the empty seat, too, before continuing, "I've got a couple slices left. Feel free to have one or two. You owe me, though." Her name had popped up a few times, in a few different countries and contexts, during his time with SHIELD. He hadn't really been able to keep track of her after moving to SWORD, but somehow he figured she still managed to attend some function or buy a company somewhere whenever interesting things happened there.

Sue slid into the offered seat with a sigh of relief. "Next time, the pizza's on me," she agreed with a laugh. "You know, if Jenny Williams or anyone from class could see me now, they'd all be insanely jealous."

Clint tilted his head to the side a little before wincing just the slightest bit and saying, "Nope, pretty sure Jenny wouldn't be jealous at all. She'd probably throw a shoe at my head. Again. And before you say anything about inappropriate fraternization between TAs and students, she and I hooked up the semester after I gave her a B- in Physics."

"You what?" The slice of pizza in Sue's hand was forgotten as she stared at Clint in disbelief. "You know you had pretty much an entire class — no, an entire department of women throwing themselves at you, some of them insanely hot, and you went with Jenny Williams? Really?" That might have been a little catty, but Jenny and Sue had just never gotten along in college. They just rubbed one another the wrong way.

Reaching for his drink, Clint attempted to suppress a smirk and mostly failed as he took a sip. "I mean," he said. "She had some interesting ideas. Not as interesting as Cathy Manning's or Samantha Dawkins', but interesting. Richard Watson and Doctor Vince Crowley had some fascinating ideas, actually."

"I... wow..." Sue took another sip from her drink to by her time to get her thoughts together, the three hottest men in the department had been a common daydream for most of the girls she'd known. "Apparently I missed quite a lot. How come my grad student life was never quite that exciting?"

"You probably had a lot more in the way of actual discussions with whoever had really great ideas," Clint offered, grinning. He finished off his beer and reached for the pitcher to refresh his glass, then shrugged. "And way fewer fights. Less violence."

"My my, what have you been getting yourself into Doctor Barton?" Sue teased, a smile playing around her lips. "It sounds like life was... wickedly interesting for you back then."

"That's one way of looking at it," Clint allowed, shaking his head a bit. "But what about you? Are you actually going to try to buy out the world's smallest company? What, are they sitting on an oil field no one's tapped yet? Isn't that illegal? I mean, drilling in Alaska?"

"There's more to Barrow than just oil," Sue pointed out sitting back in her chair. "Like you said, getting at the oil would be too hard, but the people - now that's something different all together. You've got a company here skilled and experienced at providing logistical support under the harshest of conditions. Those skills are difficult to find but the experience, that can be used all over the world. Besides, I'd have missed the chance to steal your cold pizza otherwise, and how could I pass up that opportunity?"

"Uh huh," Clint said, his skepticism about her interest in his cold pizza obvious. "You're here for a long weekend?"

"Mmhmm," Sue nodded. "I thought it'd take longer and well why not I could use a break and it's as peaceful a place to relax as any other. Probably more peaceful than most places to be honest."

"It is that — peaceful, I mean," Clint said, nodding slowly. "Definitely that."